HEX20 develops digital twin for smallsat power systems

(SpaceEnergy) Indian small-satellite manufacturer HEX20 has developed a time-domain modelling framework to simulate spacecraft solar generation, electrical loads and battery state of charge under dynamic orbital conditions.

The framework models power generation across multiple solar panels using changing Sun-spacecraft geometry, individual Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), deployment state, incidence angle and eclipse transitions.

Spacecraft attitude is propagated through the simulation while subsystem consumption follows duty cycles across Phoenix, Safe and Nominal operating modes. Battery state of charge is recalculated as generation and demand change.

HEX20 said conventional static or orbit-averaged power budgets can fail to capture rapid changes caused by tumbling, detumbling and spacecraft mode transitions.

The MATLAB-based tool includes an interactive graphical user interface and is intended to provide a higher-fidelity representation of on-orbit electrical power behaviour during spacecraft design and operations.

The work is distinct from HEX20’s separately reported modular multi-MPPT solar power architecture, which addresses hardware fault tolerance rather than power-system modelling.